HE reader Roy Batty has convinced me that Tony Soprano got hit last night, and possibly his whole family along with him. Seriously. None of us except Batty and (I presume) a few others were sharp enough to decipher the meaning — a very obvious one, in Batty’s view — of what we saw. Here’s his explanation:
“Just how closely did people who call themselves fans pay attention last night? The writing is not only on the wall — it’s on the floor, the ceiling and fluttering from a banner over the entrance: Tony and probably the family got hit.
“I didn’t think so just after it had ended, believing like many that David Chase had simply set up some sort of bullshit ambiguous ending to engender debate. I argued that had something happened, we would not have seen Meadow enter the diner. And that she was meant, as the person least connected to Tony’s blood money, to survive because of her distance from the family.
“But I was just going on surface information and not really considering all the things that make it impossible to ignore. While most are in the form of metaphors and callbacks to past characters, the single biggest signpost that is a virtual headstone is the flashback to Bobby and Tony in the boat talking about what it’s like to be killed.
“Bobby says you don’t see it coming and it’s just over. The show then ends with a ‘smash cut’ to black. It doesn’t get any clearer than that.
“I think too many people are pissed that Chase didn’t end it the way they had written in their minds or hate the idea that Tony, et. al. are gone. I don’t know if it was brilliant, but not seen through glasses of denial it’s pretty clear.”